Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

A servant of Aakva had a privileged position. Food, skins for the back, and skins to protect against cold and the wetness of night were provided by the tribe in exchange for the servant’s studies and visions. To dispute Uhe’s vision would mean ordeal by stoning or fire. Iyjiia liked its position. Iyjiia was old. And Iyjiia answered.

"I do not dispute your vision, Uhe."

The roar of approval from the gathered hunters was cut short as Bantumeh stood and shouted.

"I dispute your vision, Uhe!" Bantumeh turned toward Iyjiia. "May Aakva clean its waste with your cowardly mouth!" The ruler of the Mavedah faced Uhe. "I would see which of us Aakva favors with the stones!"

The challenge to ordeal was ended by the hiss of a hunter’s spear sailing through the night. The pointed shaft entered Bantumeh’s chest, and Bantumeh looked at it as though surprised. Up at the hunters went Bantumeh’s eyes. "One has chosen for all."

And then Bantumeh fell.

Those who surrounded Bantumeh’s still body felt the breath of Aakva’s tabu against murder upon their necks. But no one looked to see who was missing its spear. And no one pulled the spear from Bantumeh’s body to see whose sign the spear carried, until Uhe pulled the spear from the body and held it over its head.

"See you all that Aakva has spoken." And then Uhe threw the spear into the fire. If there were. a sign upon the spear’s shaft, it went to ash before their eyes. And it was whispered among the hunters that the shaft carried Aakva’s own sign.

One hunter began the cheer, and then all the hunters cheered until their sound pushed the death drums from the night sky. All swore their obedience to Uhe and Aakva’s new Law of War. The masters left the fire to convey Aakva’s new law to their peoples, and the hunters there left to begin their preparations for the times to come.

As the beat of the death drums again filled the night air Uhe was left alone at the fire, save for a hunter named Conseh who squatted next to the flames. Conseh’s hands were clasped because it carried no spear. Conseh’s face was impassive because it hid that which should not be known.

"Uhe, I have a question."

"Ask, Conseh."

And the hunter asked: "When Aakva talks to you, do you hear it through your head, your womb, or your belly?"

Uhe studied the hunter. It seemed to the servant that Aakva’s tabus had taken ghostly forms and were dancing above the hunter’s head.

"Conseh, you are impertinent."

The hunter stood and the images vanished. "I am not. My peace demands an answer. Aakva’s new law speaks to most of us through the womb and belly."

"Do you dispute the new law, Conseh?"

The hunter waved its hands at the servant of Aakva. "I would not dispute you, for the God of the Day Light’s new law speaks to all of us, and with a voice that cannot be silenced. But it is a law that anyone of us could have made."

The servant of Aakva looked toward the fire. The shape of the murderer’s spear was indistinguishable from the fire’s sticks.

"I have no answer for you, Conseh."

Conseh looked toward the backs of its fellow hunters as they moved into the night to prepare for war.

"It is my wonder what the hunters will do once Aakva stops speaking to their wombs and bellies and begins again to speak to their heads."

The hunter left the fire. And to Uhe the hunter left both a question and a truth.

Joanne Nicole stopped the recording, and turned toward Vunseleh. It was wiping its hands. "Vunseleh, this Uhe is a savage. What is this savage doing in your Talman: your path of life?"

The Drac put away its medications, then stood silently for a long while. "Joanne Nicole, each Koda of The Talman has in it a number of truths. Through the events of the stories, those truths are revealed. It is for the student to find the truths that best serve its own talma." Vunseleh paused again. "For me, Uhe was the first one in my race’s history to stand up and say, God is wrong! Uhe did that, and then stood to bear the burden of its claim."

The footsteps walked from the room, Nicole replaced her robe, and continued listening to the story of the heartsick servant from the Madah-the poisoned land.

…As Uhe walked, it looked at the sky and addressed the light of the red clouds.

"Aakva, if you exist, and if you are God, why do you play with your creatures so?"

Uhe came among its warriors, and all cheered the demonstration of the truth of Uhe’s vision of the new Law of War…

"…why do you play with your creatures so?"

Nicole stopped the story as she felt something twist within her gut. Fear? No, it was a guilt that she could not identify.

How often have humans asked Uhe’s question? When had I asked it last?

…Mallik’s corpse on the litter; the dark brown faces of the fishers-their eyes offering sympathy, but demanding, in return, strength.

Strength for myself, and for Mallik’s unborn child…

Uhe was an ancient, alien creature. Hermaphrodite, superstition-ridden savage, and cannibal. Yet Nicole found Uhe touching something within her. She felt Uhe’s desperation, its rage, its hope, its overwhelming guilt. But was Uhe driven by the plight of the Mavedah, or grief of the death of its child, Leuno? Did it matter?

Uhe’s guilt was inflicted by an antiquated sun god. Mine? I never did learn her… or his name. Its name.

"You look unhappy, Joanne Nicole." The voice belonged to Vencha Eban.

"Vencha Eban, do you have any children?"

"No."

The Drac’s voice reflected a sorrow of staggering depths. "After the birth of my only child,' Hiurod, my reproductive organs… had to be removed. Hiurod died in the battle of Chadduk’s Station."

"I am very sorry."

Vencha Eban was silent for a moment. "Joanne Nicole, do you have any children?"

She turned on her side and closed her eyes. "I don’t want to talk anymore."

…the cannibal of the Madah.

Joanne Nicole was not aware of how many times she listened again to the Koda Ovida over the following days. But in her dreams she would see this Uhe and follow the ancient alien’s bloody steps from the Madah through the lands that would be conquered and called Sindie.

And she would see Uhe as it stared at the old masters of the Mavedah as they picked over and gnawed on Leuno’s bones-

-she would awaken; sometimes crying, sometimes screaming.

Then she would listen again to the story. While she listened, she would close her eyes and wait for her dreams to bring her, again, the sight of Uhe’s face.

…and the face was not strange to her.

Nicole awakened but remained still, continuing to think upon the things she had seen in her dream. Uhe had denied the immortality of rules, had unleashed bloody war upon the Sindie to save the Mavedah, and had succeeded only to take its own life as payment in return for its guilt.

Uhe had placed the god, Aakva, aside; had declared to itself that the god was wrong; and had placed a stamp on the Sindie that continued down through almost twelve thousand years to the present.